TS setup tolerances

[mcgyver]

New saw that I'm just setting up and wondering what tolerances are appropriate. Using a dial indicator....

miter slot to blade 7/1000's out fence to miter slot 4/1000's out

are these acceptable?

[Leon]

How do your cuts look. If they show tooth marks and you are not happy, try for .001-003 for the miter slot to blade and dead on parallel for the fence to the slot.

[John]

If the cuts are good, leave it alone, but personally I would like the miter slot to blade to be 0.001 - 0.003. And get the fence as close to dead parallel as you can, but 0.004 over the entire length of the miter slot is not enough to hassle over unless you are having problems with your cuts

John

[Electric Stu]

I agree that you should strive for less than 0.003 parallelism between the miter slot(s) and the blade, adjusting the table top (on a cabinet saw) or trunnions (on a contractor saw) as necessary to achieve this tolerance.

On a recent Delta X5 Biesemeyer I bought, my fence was out of parallel a bit (about 0.0045), with the center slightly concave compared to both ends on the left side of the fence and about 0.002 on the right side. I called Biesemeyer about replacing it and they claimed their internal benchmark is 0.007. Go figure. I should have told them it was out 0.01, but my cuts look clean, so I probably won't complain (unless someone convinces me otherwise).

Congrats on the new saw!

Stu

[Pete Duncan]

According to Kelly Mehler (The Table Saw Book), the blade should no more than 3/1000s out of parallel with the miter slot. Because most blades are not perfectly flat, it's best to measure from the miter slot to only one spot on the blade, rather than from two different spots.

Set up the indicator on a spot near the front edge of the blade (just inside the radius of the teeth) and make a mark on the blade near that spot. Then rotate the blade so that this mark is at the rear of the blade and check the indicator reading at that point.

If the readings are taken with the indicator attached to a miter gage, it's important to make sure that it fits in the miter slot with no play. Any unwanted movement of a loose miter gage will show up on the dial indicator, so make sure that the gage fits snugly in the slot before using it to check the blade alignment.

Mehler recommends setting the fence so that it is no more than 1/1000 farther away from the rear of the blade than it is from the front of the blade. The fence should definitely not be closer to the rear of the blade than to the front. Of course, the fence should be adjusted AFTER the blade is aligned to the miter slot.